Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
May 8, 2014

The word ‘tragedy’ has its roots in the Ancient Greek ‘tragodia’, literally ‘the song of the goat’. In Night on Bald Mountain, Patrick White’s Australian tragedy, the goats’ plaintive cries echo throughout the play. The baying goats are a reminder that under the surface civility of the characters there exists an animalistic carnality constantly threatening to be let loose.

Patrick White, the great curmudgeon of Australian literature and drama, wrote Night on Bald Mountain in a theatrical style of his own. First performed in 1964, the play owes more to the dark American dramas of Eugene O’Neill than any Australian playwriting tradition. Despite White’s exceptional literary status, the play has been rarely staged since, which makes Malthouse’s production a welcome opportunity for audiences to re-examine the work 50 years on.

Like Mussorgsky’s composition of the same name, White’s Night on Bald Mountain gives the natural world a mysticism and eeriness that resists civilising influences. A young nurse, Stella Summerhayes (Nikki Shiels), is sent to care for an alcoholic and reclusive woman, Miriam Sword (Melita Jurisic) in an isolated and grand house perched atop the barren Bald Mountain. Mrs Sword is essentially locked away from society and...